


Cock Up in Cardiff

by jer832



Series: Let Me Count the Ways [6]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: "Let Me Count the Ways", Adventure & Romance, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Missing Scene, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-09
Updated: 2014-10-09
Packaged: 2018-02-20 11:02:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2426396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jer832/pseuds/jer832
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They had angry, disconsolate sex, shagging in front of the telly during a Benny Hill repeat.  Though it was physically satisfying sex, it was particularly unfulfilling lovemaking, not even counting how bad the show was. There was no foreplay, there were no words of love, there was no feeling of true connection and euphoria, and for the first time since their first time, there was no promise of forever. That was when Rose realized the danger she had been living with that whole year, the real danger: at any time, she could end up anywhere, alone, heartbroken, forgotten. She decided she'd better keep her passport handy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cock Up in Cardiff

**Author's Note:**

> Another offering of mine from the "Let Me Count the Ways" adult rated series 1 that yumimum, scifiangel, kelkat9, fogsblue, and I wrote. This is "Boom Town" (Russell T. Davies) with explicit "missing scenes" -- See LMCTW series notes for details.

 

 

 

 

Cock Up in Cardiff

The Doctor and Rose had been together a year, best reckoning; because time's not a straight line Rose had asked Jack Harkness to help her figure it out, giving him most of the details of their travels from the moment she'd tossed her knickers and run into the TARDIS and the Doctor's arms. (But not all the details; Jack was horny enough just by bein' Jack, he didn't need encouragement.)

On what they decided was _the day_ , the TARDIS and Jack helped Rose put together a romantic gourmet dinner culminating in bananas flambé (in honour of their meeting in Henricks) and the finest brandy ever bottled (In honour of what they'd both finally admitted were their first declarations of love. Jack wanted the TARDIS to recreate the conference table but Rose thought that was a bit over the top). Jack led the Time Lord to the suite specially built by the TARDIS after Jack's design, for a night filled with candlelit dinner, the finest wines and liquors in the universe, Glen Miller (the music, not the man), dancing, _dancing_ , and Rose. Then the former Time Agent got himself good and lost within the marvelous and thoroughly sound-proofed time ship, and Rose came in.

Rose went to her lover dressed in a simple pale champagne-blush silk dress that covered just about everything in a way that she knew would stoke his imagination, hot-wire his respiratory bypass, and make him more than happy to take it off her slowly (though fast was ok with her too).

"Happy Anniversary Doctor!" Rose smiled brightly, swept into her lover's arms with eleven yellow roses, and kissed him. "You're not alone; there's me," she echoed words spoken one linear year ago (more or less), "an' I'm not goin' anywhere ever, 'cept with you, my Doctor. I promise it's always gonna be better 'cos it always will be the two of us."

The Doctor stared down at Rose wordlessly for a moment, his eyes inscrutable clouds hiding the storm raging within. Then he turned and left the dinner, left the celebration, left the fact of it being one whole fantastic year with the woman he loved more than life and needed more than oxygen, left her big romantic celebration that would end in highly creative and fantastic shagging, left her standing alone in a happily ever after room with eleven yellow roses.

He came to her later and they had angry, disconsolate sex, shagging in front of the telly during a Benny Hill repeat. Though it was physically satisfying sex, it was particularly unfulfilling lovemaking, not even counting how bad the show was. It was just a totally instinctual carnal act: animalistic thrust and lunge and drive, coil, compress, and explode. There was no foreplay, there were no words of love, there was no feeling of true connection and euphoria, and for the first time since their first time, there was no promise of forever.

That was when Rose realized the danger she had been living with that whole year, the real danger: at any time, she could end up anywhere, alone, heartbroken, forgotten.

She decided she'd better keep her passport handy.

~~

  
"There you go," Mickey handed Rose her passport.

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "I told you, Rose, you don't need a passport!"

Rose gave the Doctor a solid look. "It's all very well goin' to Platform One and Justicia and the Glass Pyramid of San Kloon, but what if we end up in Brazil? I might need it. You see, I'm—" Her voice broke but she shook her head and got through it. "I'm prepared for anythin'."

"That makes one of us," the Doctor mumbled quietly enough that Rose and Mickey didn't hear.

"Sounds like you're staying then," Mickey said to Rose sulkily, though he pretty much knew the answer already— after all, it had been two years for him since his girl had run into a stupid blue box after a crazy ugly old alien. He was over her. He'd gotten her out of his system and gone on with his life. Except that in the awkward silence that had fallen like an anvil between Rose and the Doctor, Mickey Smith felt an unwanted but blazing spark of hope.

~~

The TARDIS stood in front of the water feature in Millennium Centre Square, a conspicuous anachronism totally ignored by all the people walking past her.

All but one. Like a comet moving around its sun, Mickey Smith orbited the time ship, fighting her pull but unable to break away from the TARDIS's influence. Or maybe it was Rose's.

It had been exciting and fun helping capture Margaret-Slitheen; Mickey decided he could get used to being with the Doctor, 'cept not like that Jack Flash bloke maybe wanted to be, or as Rose's never really _ex'd_ ex-boyfriend, watching his girl _be_ with someone else.

"S'freezin' out here," Rose said softly from behind him.

"Better than in there. Margaret does deserve it, she's a Slitheen." He backed up his pronouncement with a solid nod, which faltered as he turned and his eyes found first Rose's beautiful face then the TARDIS. "It's just… weird.., in that box. You with both of 'em now?"

"Wha? No! Jack is, well, he's… Jack. And the Doctor—"

"Don't lie anymore, Rose—not to me, not to yourself. Are ya or ain't ya?"

Rose worried her bottom lip. "I didn't really need my passport."

Mickey stared at her, remembering the charge of something he'd felt go off between her and the Doctor, like ozone before a lightning storm, and the irrational hope he'd felt ignite in him along with it. He sighed, kissing stability and security with Trish Delaney goodbye. "I've been thinkin', you know... we could... go and have a drink. Have a pizza or somethin'. Just you and me."

Rose nodded. "That'd be nice."

"Go to a hotel… spend the night?"

"Okay… yeah."

"Do you gotta go an' tell him?" he asked.

"It's none of his business," she said.

With a grin, Mickey grabbed Rose's hand and started off with her.

Rose Tyler believed she was a lot of things that made her not nearly good enough, but she wasn't a tramp or a two-timer. She eased her hand out of Mickey's, took his arm instead. "We gotta talk, Mickey," she said softly, "Just talk. I haveta explain some things to you." Mickey nodded. Rose smiled fondly at the man who in many ways had been as much her hero as the Doctor was and gave him a hug. Then the two of them walked off.

Inside, on the TARDIS scanner, the Doctor and Jack watched them go.

Margaret-Slitheen watched the Doctor.

~~

"I'm goin' out with Trisha Delaney," Mickey said. Rose stopped walking and stared at him.

"Right… that's… nice. Trisha from the shop?"

"Yeah. So what' d'you wanna do now? We could ask about hotels…"

"What would Trisha Delaney say?" Rose asked, eyebrow cocked.

"You left me!" Mickey whinged suddenly, "We were nice. We were happy. Then you give me a kiss and run off with him like I'm nothing—"

"I stayed with you, Mickey! I let you tell me lies about my mum endin' up old and alone and abused by a boyfriend if I left. I stepped back and let you shackle my ankle and own me, body and soul and spirit." She sighed. "Maybe neither one of us was bein' mature right then."

Mickey said nothing, just shrugged blokishly. Rose felt very alone and lost in the universe despite having the passport… or maybe because of it and what it said about her more than about the Doctor and his manic depression, or even Mickey and his plaintive constancy and dark sulks. She looked herself in the soul and the heart, and took stock: she was confused and hurt and angry and worried and scared, a woman in love walking arm in arm with the wrong bloke; talking about motels with him because the right bloke was an immensely powerful, brilliant, over-sexed, emotionally challenged, nine hundred year old baby.

She gave Mickey a _you've meant the world to me_ best-mate kiss on the cheek. She told him that she honestly didn't know if she'd ever be with the Doctor, an' she wasn't gonna be with Jack, but she couldn't be with him and be fair to him.

Then she went off to have some angry, disconsolate sex with the Doctor.

~~

The Doctor felt none of the manic glee he should at being handcuffed to a desperate and cunning mass murderer he knew was planning to _off_ him in the white-tablecloth restaurant filled with diners. Dinner and bondage, his prisoner had joked. The Doctor felt like he was the one in bondage, and not in any good way. From what Jack and he had seen and heard on the monitor earlier, he figured that by now Rose was off at a motel with Rickey the idiot doing—no, he couldn't even think that; but he knew it was his fault.

In way over his head since they'd met, he had been content and happy to be an old lovesick idiot. Now he was bloody terrified, because when Rose had come to him with eleven yellow roses he had looked into the future to see if there could be a street corner 2 a.m. life for them, and he had sensed a thin black thread twisted through Rose's and his joined time lines.

It shouldn't be there. It was fixed and inscrutable. It obsessed him, skulking behind anything else he tried to think about and everything he did from that moment on.

Like this downtime with his prisoner. Caught in his preoccupation, he'd missed the coffee shop he'd been heading for, finding himself and Margaret being seated in this elegant restaurant instead. With a gruff and ungracious nod to serendipity, he asked the server for a bottle of the first red he spotted on the wine list, a pitcher of real cream, and Kerrygold butter. He poured out most of the wine and a bit of cream; then he took all the sterling tableware from the two closest tables, oblivious to the patrons' glares and exclamations. As Margaret chattered enough to keep up both ends of their conversation, he constructed a temporal periscope that should have given him a backside view into the future; but he barely got close because the tableware were only silver-plate and the poisoned dart Margaret spit at him fell into the cream, wreaking havoc with the ph. Still, it had worked well enough to give him the sense of a dark and evil danger ahead of them, and he was now certain that there was something expertly hidden even to his full Time Lord abilities.

The Gold Spot neutralized the Slitheen's poison gas, though it didn't do anything for either Margaret's bad breath or his bad mood. He decided to ask Jack's help after they took Margaret back to Raxacoricofallapatorius. He hoped the ex-Time Agent's expertise could help him untangle the thread and track down his and Rose's together-future. Then he'd take Rose on a holiday to make things up to her, show her how much he'd loved the last year with her and how much he planned to treasure every fantastic moment she would gift him, every additional year he could run hand in hand with her.

Even if he had to steal them. He knew he would bend every rule, break them if necessary, to keep their time lines whole and combined… to keep Rose Tyler.

~~

Rose had let the Doctor hurt her female pride, and that was just flippin' bloody stupid!

The crap her mercurial alien lover could pull only added to her insecurities about their relationship. Problem was, no matter how often the Doctor said he loved her and all the exhausting fantastic ways he showed it, Rose never felt totally convinced that he'd stick around unless she kept him chained to their bed; and even that didn't help her fears, really – Like when she just wanted to get him off properly but she had to wait for him to stop singing with handcuff-rattling accompaniment—"Chains of Love" or (shudder) "Can't Smile Without You" or "Satisfaction" (which often got him more than just the little kinky foreplay he was askin' for). Or when he made what he called impressive strategic suggestions, and she called babbling inanely in chained-down mode, while she sat on his ankles and thought about better things he could be doing with those soft gorgeous lips and tongue than flapping them that way. Maybe he had become bored with her pathetic attempts at being a _femme fatale_. She knew he could always simply sonic himself out of bondage and out of her life forever.

Even worse, 'cos the Doctor loved to blow things up so much, Rose was never not terrified of him going off without her and getting himself killed all alone, and her never knowing, and always wondering why he didn't come back to her.

Rose shuddered, and it was like a scythe slashing across her nape, a bolt of pain and flames…. like something wrong breathing down her back… like something not imaginary and not human. Figuring it was a flare-up of the latest Time Lord-induced insecurities brought about by a prick in her _Weltanschauung_ (a bored, self-indulgent, unthinking prick), she ignored it as long as she could, then Rose gave Mickey some garbled attempt at apology and ran off to confront the Doctor.

~~

Nicely obscured by the lobster and crab tanks, Rose watched the Doctor and Margaret having dinner and darts in the poshest restaurant in Cardiff. The table was set almost as fancy as Jack and the TARDIS had done hers, and there was wine and candlelight (again, like hers); Margaret's hand began to move along the Doctor's, up over his wrist, and … blimey she recognized those 'cuffs!

With the stealth of an experienced predator, she moved closer.

She heard the Doctor tell Margaret he believed that she'd been able to overcome her blood lust and had chosen not to kill some girl. That was her Doctor, yeah, always finding the good in people, always offering them a chance and a choice, a real softy on the inside he was, always—

No. Nope. Rose ground her teeth together in a smile that another angry lover would recognize instantly.

That fartin' alien in _bitch's_ clothing had everythin' that she'd had for their anniversary dinner… plus a hand feelin' up _her_ Doctor! He might be a softy but he was bein' a prick, and Rose didn't need advice from her phone friend to figure out it was time again to command his attention and dominate.

She suddenly remembered that pizza joint that plastic Mickey took her to and the Doctor took her in. Rose smiled that smile that throughout history had warned men to get their affairs in order. She slipped to the floor and surreptitiously crawled to his table, then under it.

"Then you know I'm capable of better— " Margaret tried to plea bargain with the Doctor.

Rose covered her mouth to keep from laughing out loud. The Doctor had already offered Margaret a chance; even if she was capable of better and had let someone live, she'd chosen to continue her murdering lifestyle in general. Rose grinned, anticipating the fantastically funny and scathing comment her Time Lord would make to cut the Slitheen down to size.

Speaking of size… She crawled between his long loosely sprawling legs and carefully undid his fly. She knew from experience that when the Doctor was being all Time Lordy his blood raced into his impressive brain, ignoring his other impressive organ. She also knew from experience that from the moment she sucked him hard, she would have nine seconds before the Doctor's brain realized that his blood flow had been reversed and figure out what was happening elsewhere in his body… nine seconds to scrape her teeth all the way down to his balls and back, work him with her tongue and hands, and stroke those two hypersensitive areas on his Gallifreyan anatomy that human blokes didn't have, making him go off like a cannon misfiring—all carnal animal boom and bang, no release of joy-giving endorphin, the temporo-tactile region of his frontal lobe not geared up to process the neuro-sensory bang his thalamus was jumping up and down and shouting over. She eased between his legs, released his penis, and opened her mouth oh-so-lightly around the head, her lips and tongue and teeth poised to torment her lover.

"—It doesn't mean anything," the Doctor answered Margaret's entreaty, and Rose froze.

The Doctor's voice was weary and sad, and unforgiving. It was judgment and mourning. But Rose twigged it wasn't just about Margaret.

"Doctor, I spared her life— "

"You let one of them go, but that's nothing new. Every now and then, a little victim's spared. Because she smiled, because he's got freckles, 'cos they begged… And that's how you live with yourself. That's how you slaughter millions. Because once in a while, on a whim, if the wind's in the right direction, you happen to be kind."

"Only a killer would know that," Margaret said coldly.

The harsh, calculated _j'accuse_ reverberated throughout the room.

But the Doctor's silence reverberated louder.

Rose gasped... and inhaled the Doctor so deep she almost choked herself. She heard the Doctor's cry of shock turn into gobsmacked surprise as recognition hit. As she fought to keep from gagging, her mouth and tongue worked against him, evoking a garbled moan that he couldn't quite fight down.

He was a flippin' stupid masochistic hero, her Doctor, and lost without her, and she wouldn't let Margaret's cunning words slash his bloody fragile soul! Decision made, Rose moved her mouth and tongue in a long, loving kiss, coaxing the Doctor's growing hardness with her hot wet caress. Her tongue circled the head, flicked across the notch in the tip, and dipped to free his essence. "Doctor," she heard Margaret question, but Margaret was insignificant. "Doctor," Rose whispered, putting her love and trust and faith, and a fair amount of suction into the word. Their hands found each other, their fingers wrapped together and he gripped her so hard it almost hurt. Her fingers adored his with tender encouraging caresses, as her mouth adored his length.

Rose loved him tight and hot and unconditionally, because he was beyond the constraints of small conditions; she loved him passionately because he was a good good man; she loved him tenderly because his justice was honest and tender; she loved him thoroughly and fully to the end, making sure he was satisfied; and she would love him forever because there was no other way to love him, not for her. If she had had the power of a goddess, which she didn't (at least not yet that Rose knew of) she would have loved him throughout all of time, certainly into his next regeneration (something else she didn't know about yet).

While the Doctor put himself away, Rose stood over the confused Slitheen, sparking and majestic. "You're wrong about everything, Margaret. The Doctor doesn't play with lives; he saves 'em. He does the best he can, which is a thousand times better than most of us deserve, though he would disagree with me. He doesn't leave devastation, he leaves justice… a seed of hope, an idea… to take root in that devastation and grow into something beautiful and strong. He could be a god easily but he never will, because he knows that even in the hands of someone who only wants to do Good, power of that magnitude can make a person go so wrong."

Margaret recovered from her shock sooner than the Doctor (which should be taken to Rose's credit). "How powerful can a Time Lord be when the meager efforts of a little girl can shatter and break him?"

Rose grinned wolfishly. "I eat Time Lords for breakfast, Margaret. The Doctor's Justice is the power that holds the cosmos together. Don't mess with him."

Margaret trembled at Rose Tyler's pronouncement.

Maybe it was the building.

Or possibly Cardiff.

Rose gave the Doctor a blazing kiss. "I need to find Mickey!" He caressed her cheek with his free hand and nodded, and she ran out the door to find her best friend.

Mickey was where Rose had left him. Waiting. "Been thinkin', Rose."

"Think later, Mickey, come with me to the TARDIS. Somethin's wrong. We'll be safe there!" Mickey just stared at her. "Come on, Mick!"

"Go on, then, run! It's him again, isn't it? It's the Doctor, it's always gonna be the Doctor and it's never me!"

"Mickey—"

"Rose, I don' wanna be safe. I wanna be loved."

"Yeah, Mick. Me too."

Rose got back to the TARDIS as hell broke loose in Cardiff. Then Margaret got free and hell broke loose in the TARDIS, and Rose found herself caught in a terrifying, tightening, murderous ring of Slitheen Hell.

~~

"The rift's gonna convulse!" Harkness yelled. "She'll destroy the whole planet!"

"And you with it!" Margaret tightened her chokehold on Rose's throat and laughed.

Lighting burst from the TARDIS light into the Cardiff night sky, ricocheting through dimensions and destabilizing time and space as Margaret's extrapolator opened the rift. Just as Harkness had warned, the rift began to convulse.

Jack's eyes followed Margaret's every little move as he watched for his chance to jump her and get Rose away. Across the console from them, the Doctor stood silent and watchful as he communed with his sentient ship. He compartmentalized away the terror he felt for Rose, but it was a struggle and impossible to shut away completely.

A console panel directly in front of Margaret burst open, and a blinding white light more powerful than the rift energy surged out.

"The heart of the TARDIS," the Doctor calmly told the Slitheen, "This ship's alive. You've opened its soul." The Time Lord looked at Margaret with fathomless compassion. "Look inside, Blon Fel Fotch. Look at the light."

Blon looked. She smiled into the Doctor's eyes and accepted her judgment… his compassion. "Thank you." The light engulfed the Slitheen; the man she had called murderer and strove to destroy gave Blon Fel Fotch her second chance.

"Don't look—stay there! Close your eyes!" the Doctor shouted to Rose and Jack as he rushed to slam down the controls that shut the console panel, closing off the TARDIS's blinding display of her transcendental power. Jack's back was to the console as he moved to Rose; he did not see. But for a moment, before Jack caught her up and shielded her, like Blon Fel Fotch, Rose faced the open console. For a moment, she saw into the TARDIS's soul and heart. For a moment, the TARDIS saw into hers.

"Jack," the Doctor was yelling, "shut it down, shut it all down!"

The Doctor rushed to Rose, checking her with his sonic as he ran. He wrapped her up in his arms and held her more tightly than Margaret had, but Rose didn't mind; she looked up to make a joke about it.

Tears leaked through the Time Lord's tightly shuttered eyes and ran down his cheeks. His lips raced as Gallifreyan words tumbled out over each other, untranslated by the TARDIS. His body trembled around hers, and Rose thought that maybe she was holding him up more than he her. Her fingers cupped his cheek.

"Doctor." He opened his eyes and looked down at her.

If eyes ever could actually, physically eat a person up (and by now Rose didn't assume anything was impossible) she would be half-devoured already. She lowered her head into the hollow of his shoulder and let him hold her. When she realized he was apologizing for almost getting her killed by the Slitheen again, she broke away and rolled her eyes at him.

"So, didya have a nice dinner? I sure did." Her tongue pressed her implication into the inside of her cheek.

"Rose, what were ya doin' in th' restaurant?"

She grinned. "Wha'd'it feel like to you?"

"Oi, that's not—no, I mean—" he sputtered.

"I was angry, Doctor."

"That's what you humans do when you're angry?! Follow a man to a restaurant, slip under the table, an' go down—" The Doctor caught Harkness's curiously knowing smile. "—and interfere with him interrogating a perp?"

Jack Harkness chortled at the Doctor's sudden blush. "Your Rose is a horticultural lie, a cultivated carnivore. Goddess knows, Doc, you are the chosen one of your chosen one. So give up, give in, and let yourself be wolfed down by the alpha female."

"Wolfed down?" the Time Lord squeaked. The tang of his fear and desire was in the continuum, but also a hint of something else.

"Doc, your big bad is destined to be devoured by a big bad she-wolf—" Jack looked the Doctor up and down, licking his lips lasciviously, then gave Rose a knowing wink. "—no doubt a virtuoso performance. Rosie, I'll finish up here and get us to Raxacoricofallapatorius while you show the Doctor how we humans do a seriously deep interrogation that wrings everything out of our perp."

"Sure thing, Captain Jack." With a grin, Rose wrapped her fingers through the Doctor's and led him to their room.

~~

He undressed her creatively (and fast, which was just fine with the both of them). They knelt on the bed, facing each other, thighs wrapped around thighs, fingers wrapped through fingers. The Doctor leaned over and took one of Rose's nipples into his mouth, lathing it gently with his tongue. Rose arched back; her pelvis pushed into him and her fingers dug into the firm muscle of his bum. As he sucked and licked a nipple, his thumb and fingers teased her other nipple, twisting, pulling, scraping a fingernail across its firm little plateau. When Rose bucked against him, driving the stiffened nub deeper into his mouth along with the sensitive flesh surrounding it, the Doctor took it as an invitation. Wrapping the fingers of one hand through her hair and those of his other over her bum, he held his lover fast and suckled tenaciously. Only when Rose's squeals collapsed into moaning gasps and sobs, her nails roved frantic channels into his back and bum, and he felt her slippery dampness all down his thigh, did he let her go.

"My justice is the power that holds the cosmos together?"

"Jack tol' me."

"Ah. Y'know, back at the restaurant your justice almost did me in."

"Blew you away, did I?"

"Nah. Can't get rid of me that easily. I'm not going anywhere, ever, except with you, my Rose. I promise it's always gonna be the two of us."

"Yeah? I can't think of anything more fantastic!" Rose gave the Doctor that grin she knew he couldn't resist. "But how 'bout for now you put your mouth back to the better use it had before ya decided to flap those soft gorgeous lips?"

"How 'bout instead I use it to dispense some justice of my own?" He grinned. Flipping Rose onto the bed, he dragged her legs up over his shoulders and made a silly face at her. Rose giggled. Then she moaned. Then she began to sob his name.

Much later, satiated and exhausted, the Doctor slept in Rose's arms. His body was wrapped tightly around hers and he held her with a palpable urgency, as if knowing how close he'd come to losing her, he couldn’t suffer even one centimetre of her left uncherished, not even in sleep.

Rose did not sleep. She caressed the Doctor, her hands roving her lover's body too lightly to wake him but still resolute, and tried to wrap her mind around the radiance she had seen within the TARDIS console— the sentient Time Machine's fulgent heart.


End file.
